“Let me get out and tow you now.” Bevis did not reply. “I say--I say--
I say, Bevis.”
No use. Bevis towed him the whole way, till the raft touched the
shallow shore of the drinking-place. Then Mark got out and helped him
drag the vessel well up on the ground, so that it should not float away.
“Now,” said Bevis, after it was quite done. “Will you be a story any
more?”
“No,” said Mark, “I will not be a story again.”
So they walked back side by side to the willow tree; Mark, who was
really in the right, feeling in the wrong. At the tree Bevis picked up
the auger, and told him to bore the hole. Mark began, but suddenly
stopped.
“What’s the good of boring the hole when we have not got any gunpowder,”
said he.
“No more we have,” said Bevis. “This is very stupid, and they will not
let me have any, though I have got some money, and I have a great mind
to buy some and hide it. Just as if we did not know how to use powder,
and as if we did not know how to shoot! Oh, I know! We will go and cut
a bough of alder--there’s ever so many alders by the Longpond--and burn
it and make charcoal; it makes the best charcoal, you know, and they
always--use it for gunpowder, and then we can get some saltpetre. Let
me see--”
“The Bailiff had some saltpetre the other day,” said Mark.
“So he did: it is in the dairy. Oh yes, and I know where some sulphur
is. It is in the garden-house, where the tools are, in the orchard;
it’s what they use to smother the bees with--”
“That’s on brown paper,” said Mark; “that won’t do.”
“No it’s not. You have to melt it to put it on paper, and dip the paper
in. This is in a piece, it is like a short bar, and we will pound it up
and mix; them all together and make capital gunpowder.”
“Hurrah!” cried Mark, throwing down the auger. “Let’s go and cut the
alder. Come on!”
“Stop,” said Bevis. “Lean on me, and walk slow. Don’t you know you
have caught a dreadful fever, from being in the swamps by the river, and
you can hardly walk, and you are very thin and weak? Lean on my arm and
hang your head.”
Mark hung his head, turning his rosy cheeks down to the buttercups, and
dragged his sturdy fever-stricken limbs along with an effort.
“Humph!” said a gruff voice.
“It’s the Indians!” cried Bevis, startled; for they were so absorbed
they had not heard the Bailiff come up behind them. They quite jumped,
as if about to be scalped.
“What be you doing to that tree?” said the Bailiff.
“Find out,” said Bevis. “It’s not your tree: and why don’t you say when
you’re coming?”
“I saw you from the hedge,” said the Bailiff. “I was telling John where
to cut the bushes from for the new harrow.” That caused the rustling in
the forest. “You’ll never chop he down.”
“That we shall, if we want to.”
“No, you won’t--he stops your ship.”
“It isn’t a ship: it’s a raft.”
“Well, you can’t get by.”
“That we can.”
“I thinks you be stopped,” said the Bailiff, having now looked at the
tree more carefully. “He be main thick,”--with a certain sympathy for
stolid, inanimate obstruction.
“I tell you, people like us are never stopped by anything,” said Bevis.
“We go through forests, and we float down rivers, and we shoot tigers,
and move the biggest trees ever seen--don’t we, Mark?”
“Yes, that we do: nothing is anything to us.”
“Of course not,” said Bevis. “And if we can’t chop it down or blow it
up, as we mean to, then we dig round it. O, Mark, I say! I forgot!
Let’s dig a canal round it.”
“How silly we were never to think of that!” said Mark. “A canal is the
very thing--from here to the creek.”
He meant where the stream curved to enclose the Peninsula: the proposed
canal would make the voyage shorter.
“Cut some sticks--quick!” said Bevis. “We must plug out our canal--that
is what they always do first, whether it is a canal, or a railway, or a
drain, or anything. And I must draw a plan. I must get my pocket-book
and pencil. Come on, Mark, and get the spade while I get my pencil.”
Off they ran. The Bailiff leaned on his hazel staff, one hand against
the willow, and looked down into the water, as calmly as the sun itself
reflected there. When he had looked awhile he shook his head and
grunted: then he stumped away; and after a dozen yards or so, glanced
back, grunted, and shook his head again. It could not be done. The
tree was thick, the earth hard--no such thing: his sympathy, in a dull
unspoken way, was with the immovable.
Mark went to work with the spade, throwing the turf he dug up into the
brook; while Bevis, lying at full length on the grass, drew his plan of
the canal. He drew two curving lines parallel, and half an inch apart,
to represent the bend of the brook, and then two, as straight as he
could manage, across, so as to shorten the distance, and avoid the
obstruction. The rootlets of the grass held tight, when Mark tried to
lift the spadeful he had dug, so that he could not tear them off.
He had to chop them at the side with his spade first, and then there was
a root of the willow in the way; a very obstinate stout root, for which
the little hatchet had to be brought to cut it. Under the softer turf
the ground was very hard, as it had long been dry, so that by the time
Bevis had drawn his plan and stuck in little sticks to show the course
the canal was to take, Mark had only cleared about a foot square, and
four or five inches deep, just at the edge of the bank, where he could
thrust it into the stream.
“I have been thinking,” said Bevis as he came back from the other end of
the line, “I have been thinking what we are, now we are making this
canal?”
“Yes,” said Mark, “what are we?--they do not make canals on the
Mississippi. Is this the Suez canal?”
“Oh no,” said Bevis. “This is not Africa; there is no sand, and there
are no camels about. Stop a minute. Put down that spade, don’t dig
another bit till we know what we are.”
Mark put down the spade, and they both thought very hard indeed, looking
straight at one another.
“I know,” said Bevis, drawing a long breath. “We are digging a canal
through Mount Athos, and we are Greeks.”
“But was it the Greeks?” said Mark. “Are you sure--”
“Quite sure,” said Bevis. “Perfectly quite sure. Besides, it doesn’t
matter. _We_ can do it if they did not, don’t you see?”
“So we can: and who are you then, if we are Greeks?”
“I am Alexander the Great.”
“And who am I!”
“O, you--you are anybody.”
“But I _must_ be somebody,” said Mark, “else it will not do.”
“Well, you are: let me see--Pisistratus.”
“Who was Pisistratus?”
“I don’t know,” said Bevis. “It doesn’t matter in the least. Now dig.”
Pisistratus dug till he came to another root, which Alexander the Great
chopped off for him with the hatchet. Pisistratus dug again and
uncovered a water-rat’s hole which went down aslant to the water. They
both knelt on the grass, and peered down the round tunnel: at the bottom
where the water was, some of the fallen petals of the may-bloom had come
in and floated there.
“This would do splendidly to put some gunpowder in and blow up, like the
miners do,” said Bevis. “And I believe that is the proper way to make a
canal: it is how they make tunnels, I am sure.”
“Greeks are not very good,” said Mark. “I don’t like Greeks: don’t
let’s be Greeks any longer. The Mississippi was very much best.”
“So it was,” said Bevis. “The Mississippi is the nicest. I am not
Alexander, and you are not Pisistratus. This is the Mississippi.”
“Let us have another float down,” said Mark. “Let me float down, and I
will drag you all the way up this time.”
“All right,” said Bevis.
So they launched the raft, and Mark got in and floated down, and Bevis
walked on the bank, giving him directions how to pilot the vessel, which
as before was brought up by the willow leaning over the water. Just as
they were preparing to tow it back again, and Bevis was climbing out on
the willow to get into the raft they heard a splashing down the brook.
“What’s that?” said Mark. “Is it Indians?”
“No, it’s an alligator. At least, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a canoe
full of Indians. Give me the pole, quick; there now, take the hatchet.
Look out!”
The splashing increased; then there was a “Yowp!” and Pan, the spaniel,
suddenly appeared out of the flags by the osier-bed. He raced across
the ground there, and jumped into the brook again, and immediately a
moorcock, which he had been hunting, scuttled along the water, beating
with his wings, and scrambling with his long legs hanging down, using
both air and water to fly from his enemy. As he came near he saw Bevis
on the willow, and rose out of the brook over the bank. Bevis hit at
him with his pole, but missed; and Mark hurled the hatchet in vain. The
moorcock flew straight across the meadow to another withy-bed, and then
disappeared. It was only by threats that they stopped the spaniel from
following.
Pan having got his plateful by patiently waiting about the doorway,
after he had licked his chops, and turned up the whites of his eyes, to
see if he could persuade them to give him any more, walked into the
rick-yard, and choosing a favourite spot upon some warm straw--for straw
becomes quite hot under sunshine--lay down and took a nap. When he
awoke, having settled matters with the fleas, he strolled back to the
ha-ha wall, and, seeing Bevis and Mark still busy by the brook, went
down to know what they were doing. But first going to a place he well
knew to lap he scented the moorcock, and gave chase.
“Come here,” said Bevis; and, seizing the spaniel by the skin of his
neck, he dragged him in the raft, stepped in quickly after, and held Pan
while Mark hauled at the tow-line. But when Bevis had to take the pole
to guide the raft from striking the bank Pan jumped out in a moment,
preferring to swim rather than to ride in comfort, nor could any
persuasions or threats get him on again. He barked along the shore,
while Mark hauled and Bevis steered the craft.
Having beached her at the drinking-place on the shelving strand, they
thought they had better go up the river a little way, and see if there
were any traces of Indians; and, following the windings of the stream,
they soon came to the hatch. Above the hatch the water was smooth, as
it usually is where it is deep and approaching the edge, and Bevis’s
quick eye caught sight of a tiny ripple there near one bank, so tiny
that it hardly extended across the brook, and disappeared after the
third wavelet.
“Keep Pan there!” he said. “Hit him--hit him harder than that; he
doesn’t mind.”
Mark punched the spaniel, who crouched; but, nevertheless, his body
crept, as it were, towards the hatch, where Bevis was climbing over.
Bevis took hold of the top rail, put his foot on the rail below, all
green and slippery with weeds where the water splashed, like the rocks
where the sea comes, then his other foot further along, and so got over
with the deep water in front, and the roar of the fall under, and the
bubbles rushing down the stream. The bank was very steep, but there was
a notch to put the foot in, and a stout hawthorn stem--the thorns on
which had long since been broken off for the purpose--gave him something
to hold to and by which to lift himself up.
Then he walked stealthily along the bank--it overhung the dark deep
water, and seemed about to slip in under him. There was a plantation of
trees on that side, and on the other a hawthorn hedge, so that it was a
quiet and sheltered spot. As he came to the place where he had seen the
ripple, he looked closer, and in among a bunch of rushes, with the green
stalks standing up all round it, he saw a moorhen’s nest. It was made
of rushes, twined round like a wreath, or perhaps more like a large
green turban, and there were three or four young moorhens in it. The
old bird had slipped away as he came near, and diving under the surface
rose ten yards off under a projecting bush.
Bevis dropped on his knee to take one of the young birds, but in an
instant they rolled out of the nest, with their necks thrust out in
front, and fell splash in the water, where they swam across, one with a
piece of shell clinging to its back, and another piece of shell was
washed from it by the water. Pan was by his side in a minute; he had
heard the splash, and seen the young moorhens, and with a whine, as Mark
kicked him--unable to hold him any longer--he rushed across.
“They are such pretty dear little things,” said Bevis, in an ecstasy of
sentiment, calling to Mark. “Lie down!” banging Pan with a dead branch
which he hastily snatched up. The spaniel’s back sounded hollow as the
wood rebounded, and broke on his ribs. “Such dear little things! I
would not have them hurt for anything.”
Bang again on Pan’s back, who gave up the attempt, knowing from sore
experience that Bevis was not to be trifled with. But by the time Mark
had got there the little moorhens had hidden in the grasses beside the
stream, though one swam out for a minute, and then concealed itself
again.
“Don’t you love them?” said Bevis. “I do. I’ll _smash_ you,”--to Pan,
cowering at his feet.
The moorhens did not appear again, so they went back and sat on the top
of the steep bank, their legs dangling over the edge above the bubbling
water.
A broad cool shadow from the trees had fallen over the hatch, for the
afternoon had gone on, and the sun was declining behind them over the
western hills. A broad cool shadow, whose edges were far away, so that
they were in the midst of it. The thrushes sang in the ashes, for they
knew that the quiet evening, with the dew they love, was near. A
bullfinch came to the hawthorn hedge just above the hatch, looked in and
out once or twice, and then stepped inside the spray near his nest. A
yellow-hammer called from the top of a tree, and another answered him
across the field. Afar in the mowing-grass the crake lifted his voice,
for he talks more as the sun sinks.
The swirling water went round and round under the fall, with lines of
white bubbles rising, and quivering masses of yellowish foam ledged on
the red rootlets under the bank and against the flags. The swirling
water, ceaselessly beaten by the descending stream coming on it with a
long-continued blow, returned to be driven away again. A steady roar of
the fall, and a rippling sound above it of bursting bubbles and crossing
wavelets of the hastening stream, notched and furrowed over stones,
frowning in eager haste. The rushing and the coolness, and the song of
the brook and the birds, and the sense of the sun sinking, stilled even
Bevis and Mark a little while. They sat and listened, and said nothing;
the delicious brook filled their ears with music.
Next minute Bevis seized Pan by the neck and pitched him over into the
bubbles. In an instant, before he came to the surface, as his weight
carried him beneath, Pan was swept down the stream, and when he came up
he could not swim against it, but was drifted away till he made for the
flags, which grew on a shallow spot. There he easily got out, shook
himself, and waited for them to come over.
“I am hungry,” said Mark. “What ought we to have to eat; what is right
on the Mississippi? I don’t believe they have tea. There is Polly
shouting for us.”
“No,” said Bevis thoughtfully; “I don’t think they do. How stupid of
her to stand there shouting and waving her handkerchief, as if we could
not find our way straight across the trackless prairie. I know--we will
have some honey! Don’t you know? Of course the hunters find lots of
wild honey in the hollow trees. We will have some honey; there’s a big
jar full.”
So they got over the hatch, and went home, leaving their tools scattered
hither and thither beside the Mississippi. They climbed up the ha-ha
wall, putting the toes of their boots where the flat stones of which it
was built, without mortar, were farthest apart, and so made steps while
they could hold to the wiry grass-tufts on the top.
“Where’s your hat?” said Polly to Bevis.
“I don’t know,” said Bevis. “I suppose it’s in the brook. It doesn’t
matter.”
Volume One, Chapter IV.